


That for myself I praise (when I praise thee)

by piggy09



Series: Obscure Word Fics [13]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: (because you can't write Helena without them), (but I promise this wasn't intended as incest), Gen, Helena warnings, Incest Overtones, Pre-Series, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:30:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2057472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena and the Bard of Avon, and killing the European clones.</p>
<p>And Sarah. Always, always Sarah.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That for myself I praise (when I praise thee)

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt on Tumblr:
> 
> "Helena | Aureate: pertaining to the fancy or flowery words used by poets."

Aryanna Giordano’s body is cooling on the ground, and its blood runs in small rivers between the gaps in the wooden floorboards. Helena considers it, carefully wiping her knife in soothing motions over and over again on the copy’s jacket (it seems very soft) (Helena has never owned a nice jacket – she considers taking this one but, no, MaggieandTomas would say it was sin, MaggieandTomas would make her burn it, MaggieandTomas would raise cagefists, beltblades). She is maybe not yet used to killing things with her face. She assumes this will come with time.

If she watches the blood seep sticky into the floor she will not have to consider herself, and what she is feeling. Helena can feel the wild jagged thumping of some sort of emotion, against her bones, right at the base of her throat, her front-ribs, her bone-shield, right there. Whatever the name of that bone is.

She wonders if it could be found somewhere in these walls.

Aryanna Giordano died in a library.

Not a big one, not a _real_ library – Helena has taken shelter in those before, listened to the happy hum of people and computers, ducked her head down and kicked her feet against the rung of the chairs and crunched loudly on food she had in her pockets – but a copy library. For a copy.

Aryanna Giordano’s body is cooling on the ground. Aryanna Giordano’s door is hanging open. Aryanna Giordano’s house is silent but for the ticking of a far away clock.

Aryanna Giordano died in a library. Aryanna Giordano died in Aryanna Giordano’s library.

Now Helena stares, open-mouthed, at the books and books surrounding her. They aren’t much use to her – she is no doctor, no student; she is only ever a weapon. She is the hand of God, and what use has she for any book besides the Bible?

But she wants. She is hungry. She sucks her lip between her teeth, looks down at the body, looks back up at the bookshelves. She raises herself up from her crouch and walks one shy step towards the towering shelves, the shelves that smell like wax and sweetness and wood and glow gold in a way Helena’s hair can’t.

Her hand reaches out before she tells it to; she snaps it back and reaches for her phone instead. Checks the time. She has an hour before MaggieandTomas will get im-pa-tient, an hour and half of another hour before MaggieandTomas will get _angry_.

She finished this one off fast, faster than they were expecting – she is, after all, new to this. This killing.

She’s _earned_ it, she thinks urgently to herself, and takes one, two fumbling steps towards the shelves. Her mouth is gaping open and she folds her hands behind her back, neatly, to not hurt with her touching. She looks at the books.

Of course there wasn’t really a choice in it, her choice. There is one book with a golden spine that shines when Helena sways her head side to side; like a snake, she sways, and like a snake she is quick to strike out and grab it.

_The Sonnets_ , says the book to her. _William Shakespeare._

“Son-net,” Helena mutters lowly. She wrenches her head to one sides, worries the word apart between her teeth. A net? A net for a son? Words to keep children safe, maybe. Warnings.

Oh, wait. Is it _son_ or _sun_? In Ukrainian the difference is easy: син, сонце, but English is more difficult.

But oh, a net for light. A net to catch the light with. Those are nice words, Helena thinks, stroking the words with her thumb, watching the way they glitter. Bright words. Son net. Words to hold the light with.

She opens the book carefully, because the paper is old and thin and fragile, so thin she can see her own skin through the other side of the page.

LXXV, says the top of the page. Helena tries to say it out loud and coughs, harshly; her mouth tastes like blood for a second, like she’s coughing it up, before the word fades. Maybe it is not a word at all. Maybe it is a marking.

Doesn’t matter. She looks to the words below the letters, pauses. Strange words. Like light, she is caught.

“So you are…to my thoughts…as food to life,” she mutters to herself. “Or as…sweet-sea-son’d sho-wers are…to the ground.”

Well, that’s not English at all. The words are lying to her: saying one thing and meaning another. Helena thinks _two-faced_ , looks at Aryanna Giordano, decides maybe that’s not the word for it.

“Did you know?” she murmurs to the corpse. “You little liar library, did you know what these words meant?”

Because if it knew Helena should be able to know, yes? She puckers her lips for the body, _mwah_ , and returns to reading.

It’s like a story, a story caught between words that don’t mean anything.

It’s a story about love. It goes like this:

_So are you to my thoughts as food to life,_   
_Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;_   
_And for the peace of you I hold such strife_   
_As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found._   
_Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon_   
_Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;_   
_Now counting best to be with you alone,_   
_Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure:_   
_Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,_   
_And by and by clean starved for a look;_   
_Possessing or pursuing no delight_   
_Save what is had, or must from you be took._

_Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,_   
_Or gluttoning on all, or all away._

After a while it makes sense to Helena: love, she realizes, is like being hungry.

She places the book to her side, folds her knees to her, rests her elbows on her knees, rests her face on her fists. Thinks. Love is like being hungry for something that you don’t know. Love is like Helena: either full to bursting or empty, empty, empty. There is nothing in between.

Sometimes she has heard people say _I love you_ , but it has never made sense to her. This makes sense. God has taught her love because she has loved Him so well and kindly. She closes her eyes to thank Him and then, slowly, rips the page from the book. She folds it and puts it in her pants pocket, next to some hard candies and a lollipop she found in Aryanna Giordano’s kitchen. She wishes she had a jacket.

“Or all away,” she says to herself, low, and looks around the room as she stands up, slides the book back neatly into its place. It sticks to the leather of her gloves for a brief second, like it’s sad to leave, and then goes.

Helena goes too, out the door. And all away.

* * *

It rains on the border of Italy and Helena still has no jacket; the candy is long gone but the paper, thin as it is, is soaked through. At night in her basement (MaggieandTomas get hotel rooms, but she must-prove-her-self) she tries to say the words to herself, the words that made love make sense to her, but she can’t remember them. What she remembers goes like this:

_My thoughts of you are like food: they keep me alive._   
_When you are gone I am hungry._   
_When you are here I am full to bursting._

She knows those aren’t the words, but: they are all she has.

She clutches them tight to her chest during the fever that comes after the rain, the fever that blurs her mind to Tomas’ hand on her forehead, Maggie’s eyes on her from across the room, waitingwatching. Fever makes her limbs shake, fever makes her limbs ache; she feels stupid beyond belief to have let the rain touch her, let the rain hurt her. Janika Zingler was supposed to be dead in May, so its body could fuel spring. By the time the fever leaves Helena and she can talk again – in sentences, not _gluttoning on all_ , not голодний, not любов –  it is June. Helena stumbles to her feet, weak, hungry, and continues moving towards Austria.

Austria is more familiar than Italy – the language sounds, if not _right_ , at least not _wrong_.

She gets a coat. Maggie throws it at her after coming back from tracking; it is a big green thing, and in its pockets are wrappers and spare change that jingles between Helena’s fingers. She does not think Maggie bought the coat. She thinks maybe out there is a corpse, cold and thin and curled up in a back alley, and that corpse is Helena’s fault.

She takes the coat. It smells like human: sweat and urine and exhaustion. She breathes through her mouth.

She breathes through her mouth and goes to find Janika Zingler.

Secretly, she hopes the copy will find a library; the only time Helena is allowed herself is when she is killing, she’s finding very quickly. Otherwise MaggieandTomas just watch her, always watching, always with eyes, MaggieandTomas. If it goes to a library Helena can stay there and read.

But Janika Zingler does not go to a library. It is out very late – which is alright, because Helena does not sleep anyways – in a club that flashes with bright lights. It makes Helena want to dance…not the way Janika Zingler does, like a snake, but like Helena. Helena wants to dance like Helena.

But she doesn’t. In her coat pockets she smoothes her hands over her weapons over and over, gun in the right pocket, knife in the left pocket, everything in its rightful place, amen. She watches Janika Zingler stumble to its feet and out of the club; she follows, like a ghost.

This one doesn’t take long. She doesn’t even have to use her weapons.

But that doesn’t matter doesn’t matter doesn’t matter doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is thir-teen-twen-ty-se-ven and it will be _hours_ until MaggieandTomas isare awake. Time to _read_.

It doesn’t take her long to find a bookstore; it takes her even less time than that to get _into_ the bookstore, close the door.

It does take her a while to find the right book – it turns out William Shakespeare has written a _lot_ of things, books with names like _Ham-let_ and _Ro-me-o-and-Ju-li-et_. Some of these are names. Helena wonders if _Sonnets_ is a name. She wonders if _Sonnets_ is a person William Shakespeare loved very much, so much it made him hungry all the time.

Maybe someday she will find him and find out herself.

But that is for later. Now she finds the book and climbs a ladder that someone has left leaning against one of the shelves, all the way to the top, so that moonlight comes in through the window and shines on the book in Helena’s hands. This one is smaller and thinner and the cover is all flowers, all growing things. She rubs a thumb over one of the smallest buds, and feels sad for a moment that it will never grow to anything.

Helena loves flowers, and food, and even the copies, a little. She loves them for dying. She loves them for being gone.

She loves a lot of things. It makes her hungry.

But though she flips through the book for a while she cannot find LXXV. Instead she finds XLIII, and she thinks she likes that one better, because it speaks truth – or did. Three I’s: Janika Zingler, Danielle Fournier, Katja Obinger. One X: Aryanna Giordano. One L: light. Light. Light.

Now it is a liar, but it is an old book and maybe it did not know.

“When most I wink,” she breathes, “then do mine eyes best see. For all the days they view things – un-res-pec-ted—”

It takes her less time to read this one, and she thinks she and William Shakespeare are starting to learn each other.

This is also a story about love. Helena thinks maybe most things are, most things are about love. Or love is so hungry that it eats other things, little bits, little nibbles, and lets them into itself.

Anyways. This is a story about love. It goes like this:

_When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,_   
_For all the day they view things unrespected;_   
_But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,_   
_And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed._   
_Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,_   
_How would thy shadow's form form happy show_   
_To the clear day with thy much clearer light,_   
_When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!_   
_How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made_   
_By looking on thee in the living day,_   
_When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade_   
_Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!_

_All days are nights to see till I see thee,  
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me._

After a while it makes sense to Helena: love, she realizes, is so strong that you can’t help but dream about it. Love is so bright it makes shadows go away. Love is the day to night.

Helena lives in the dark and does not dream, much. She sucks her lip between her teeth and wonders what William Shakespeare meant, because it’s difficult for Helena to figure out.

Maybe she doesn’t _know_ love yet. Maybe it is coming. Maybe that is what William Shakespeare means to tell her. Don’t worry, Helena. Love is coming. Just two more.

“Two more,” she says to herself, hugging the book to her chest. “All days are nights until I see you.”

Then she puts the book back, hops off the ladder, and heads back. Purpose beats in her chest like a heart on the wrong side. Two more. Then she will know what love is. That is what William Shakespeare says. Two more.

(Nobody has ever said to Helena: it will be alright. Maybe William Shakespeare will understand, wherever he is. Maybe someday she will find him and say _thank you_. _Thank you for saying with your books that it will be alright._

Maybe someday she will ask him about the person he loves so badly that his words break. Helena’s words break all the time, but she doesn’t make up new ones like he does. Maybe it’s a new language, like the ones Helena hears coming from foreign doorways and from Maggie, sometimes, when she’s upset.

Which is a lot.

She thinks about him the way she thinks about herself, how she walks into stores and does not know the words for things, how she has to point like a mute. She thinks about William Shakespeare, sitting at a desk and writing, slowly and painfully with a pen – just like Helena does – and breathing through his mouth – just like Helena does, when she hurts too badly – and so full of love he can barely breathe.

Maybe William Shakespeare is alone, too, and lonely. Maybe they could be lonely together. Maybe he could teach her what love is in a more real way, more real than through words on a page.)

On her way out the door she thinks of Janika Zingler’s body and has to stop and hit herself, hard. Two more. Two more. Two more.

* * *

“I am looking for a book by William Shakespeare,” Helena says seriously, then twists her hands behind her back, twists her feet, and murmurs, “he’s my boyfriend.”

“Honey,” says the woman behind the counter, “he’s been dead for 400 years.”

“I knew _that_ ,” Helena says, but she didn’t.

It is August, now; Maggie has not found Danielle Fournier yet, not in this grand French city that smells of piss and is all old stone beneath Helena’s boots.

(She has boots, now! Boots and a jacket and pockets full of lollipops. She is rewarded for removing these foul copies from God’s earth.

…

Or MaggieandTomas are leading her. That does not make this work any less God’s work, though, any less the right thing to do. She is doing right. She is doing good. Amen.)

They have sent Helena searching, too. More and more Helena is allowed to be herself, and she uses this time to eat food in nice restaurants and look for bookstores. This is the first one she’s been able to try in weeks, the first one she’s found the time for.

And William Shakespeare is dead. He has been dead for _four hundred years_. That is so many years. That is such a long time, and now Helena will never be able to ask him _why_. She will not even be able to grieve.

It is a miracle, though, that his words still live. His words live on in books and in her; she rolls them in her mouth when she is hungry, when she is almost in love, when she is hungry. She says:

_My thoughts of you are like food: they keep me alive._   
_When you are gone I am hungry._   
_When you are here I am full to bursting._

_My dreams of you are like a bright light: they drive the darkness out._   
_When you are gone it is nighttime._   
_When you are here it is all day._

That’s not enough, though. There’s something missing and she still does not understand.

But with a tight liarsmile the woman behind the counter turns and heads deep into the store, weaving around old men with their thin paper books, children who stare at Helena from behind their parents’ legs.

Helena likes children. She always has, even when she was a child herself. Children make sense to her.

Maybe when she is done with this she will have a child of her own. She could be very good with children. She could be a wonderful mother.

For now though she is just Helena, and she follows the woman into the bookstore until she stops and gestures to a shelf.

“Here he is,” she says, bored. “The bard himself.”

“The bard,” Helena says softly. Bard. Ba-rd.

…No, she doesn’t know what it means.

She almost wants to ask, but her companion has already walked away, saying “Enjoy” over her shoulder like she doesn’t mean it at all. Helena huffs out a breath through her teeth and reaches for the shelf, past _King Lear_ , past _A Mid-su-mmer Night’s Dream_ , to _Sonnets_.

_Hello, Sonnets_ , she thinks, respectfully. _Good to see you_. This copy is brown; there is a man’s face on it. He is watching her with big dark eyes.

Helena’s mouth opens slightly, to an _o_. This must be him, William Shakespeare, who is now all bones. She runs her finger down the curve of his face, pretends she can feel flesh instead of book-cover.

But oh, oh, she does not have much time. She is supposed to be searching the arrondeesment do panteeown, whatever that might be. Maggie said it differently, and the words purred off her tongue.

Helena’s never been good with words. So she collapses herself like a tent on the floor of the aisle and opens the book, so someone else will say words for her.

XXXIX, says the top of the page, and Helena tilts her head, blinks, looks at it. Janika-Danielle-Aryanna is easy to understand, and so is -Katja, but what is that in the middle? Is there another one? Is she supposed to spare it? That doesn’t make _sense_ , and she wants to cry from it, she wants to sweep a row of books off the shelf. Still no time, though.

“Oh,” she says, softly, so that the others won’t hear her, but then she has to stop because her throat has swelled too tight to breathe through. Oh.

The rest she reads in silence, the rest of this story.

It’s a story about love. It goes like this:

_O! how thy worth with manners may I sing,_   
_When thou art all the better part of me?_   
_What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?_   
_And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?_   
_Even for this, let us divided live,_   
_And our dear love lose name of single one,_   
_That by this separation I may give_   
_That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone._   
_O absence! what a torment wouldst thou prove,_   
_Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,_   
_To entertain the time with thoughts of love,_   
_Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive,_

_And that thou teachest how to make one twain,  
By praising him here who doth hence remain._

After a while—

* * *

 

_My thoughts of you are like food: they keep me alive._   
_When you are gone I am hungry._   
_When you are here I am full to bursting._

_My dreams of you are like a bright light: they drive the darkness out._   
_When you are gone it is nighttime._   
_When you are here it is all day._

_You are me._

_I am you._

* * *

––it makes sense to Helena: love, she realizes, is finding someone who is the same as you.

Helena drops the book and stares into space for a second; there is a noise rising in the back of her throat, a small sound. Love is finding someone who is the same as you. Love is finding another half of you.

Helena holds both her hands up and twines her fingers together until they are one whole thing. She does not think there is someone out there whose hand would fit as well in her hand as her own. She does not think she will ever find someone to love right.

William Shakespeare _lied_ , and now he is _dead_. Helena groans between her teeth and throws the book across the store, a fast explosion of a movement that breaks the spine of the book like a neck. She’s ruined it. She’s ruined _everything_.

Helena buries her head in her arms, bites her lip so hard to keep from crying. Everyone is a liar except MaggieandTomas. She can’t trust anyone. She has to kill the copies and then everything will be alright and God will give her a new purpose.

She breathes; her breathing slows. Remembering that she has a purpose always helps. She has one. She is here to kill the copies, not to love. Maybe later her purpose will be to love, but that isn’t what she’s supposed to think about. She has – she has – she has to forget. About love. Just for now. One more. One more.

(She thinks about it anyways. She keeps thinking about it. _You are all the better part of me. You are all the better part of me_. What _if_ there is someone out there who is all the better parts of Helena, all the parts of Helena that were supposed to be _in_ Helena, somewhere out there a better Helena. What if they were meant to be together. What if. What if she isn’t _whole_.)

It still takes her another month to find Danielle Fournier; she wears her boots down and grows blisters, grows more feathers on her back as pen-ance. She is better. She is stronger. She searches through many many arrondeesments, and finds Danielle Fournier in the nineteenth.

This one has time to beg her, in strange words that Helena does not understand. See-voo-play, sur, see-voo-play.

Helena slits its throat and gets all covered in blood, every little bit of Helena covered in blood. She is proud of herself, she _loves_ herself for how deeply and truly she knows that this thing is lying, with its attempt at human words, with its attempt at human fear. Helena knows that it isn’t a _real_ thing, and that knowledge hums warm in her belly.

She is full. So. Maybe she is in love.

Maybe she is in love with killing. Maybe that. Maybe that is the other half of her; if she kills enough she’ll be whole. If she kills all of them.

She returns to MaggieandTomas and says: look, it is done. One more.

Tomas says stupid girl, all covered in blood. Tomas grabs her hair and Helena goes very very still and breathes through her nose and thinks fast _I praise you I praise you I praise you I praise you_ , like passing something between her fingers back and forth, soothing.

Maggie says stupid girl, Katja Obinger is gone.

Then Maggie gets on a plane to follow Katja Obinger, the little sheep gone missing, baa baa.

Helena stays with Tomas. They leave Paris fast and at night and travel in big circles, waiting for Maggie to say _come over, I have found it, come see, Helena, come see_.

Maggie says nothing. She does not say a word, ssh, and then one night Tomas brings Helena to his hotel room and shows her his computer where it says: _civilian shooting_. Where it says: _Margaret Chen_.

“Prepare yourself, child,” says Tomas. “We leave tomorrow morning.” And they do.

* * *

They fly across the ocean to Toronto, and Helena shakes and thinks about Maggie, tries to figure out how she’s feeling, what she’s feeling. Is she feeling? There is something in her stomach but she can’t figure out if it’s mourning or not. She prays for Maggie’s soul anyways, in case she was too late to turn to righteousness. Maggie does not deserve hell. Maggie saw the light. Maggie saw Helena. Helena prays.

She keeps praying all the way to Toronto, in Toronto, through the streets of Toronto. She prays as they look for Katja Obinger; without Maggie the process takes a _long_ time, maybe weeks, maybe even months. But they find it, Tomas and Helena. They find it and Helena follows it, the red light of its hair like a beacon, and she follows it. And she gets her gun.

Unfortunately she is not done, not with this – this is not her one last task. Tomas’ face, pale and old and wrinkled in the light of his computer, said _Elizabeth Childs_. Helena looked at Maggie’s dead face on the screen and thought very quietly about XXXIX. Her stomach flips, giddily, at the blasphemy of it, every time she remembers; it feels like something she should never do, it feels like something she wants to do again. Like prodding at a tooth when it is falling out.

She cuts more feathers into her back and apologizes. She keeps thinking. I. I. I. I. I.

It’s beating like a heart in her – again, that heart, that heart on the wrong side, beat-beat-beating – as she readies her gun, thinks about Katja Obinger, how it will soon be dead. Gone back to wherever it goes.

She readies her gun and sees, through the windshield: two. Her finger twitches in her surprise and Katja Obinger stops polluting the earth with sin.

_Now_ , she thinks, _two birds_ , and fires again. Elizabeth Childs’ head vanishes; Helena misses. Every single muscle in her body is roaring for her to pull the trigger – except one, one that whispers _all the better part of me, I, me, I, I I I I I_.

_Shut up_ , she thinks at it, and pulls the trigger. Another miss. Then Elizabeth Childs is gone.

Helena, tucked away in her nest, flinches and shuts her eyes like she’s been hit. Because she will be hit, and soon. She opens her eyes to break her rifle apart and _go_ , quick – and realizes that she’s crying. Her vision is blurred. William Shakespeare did not lie to her. One lives. One left.

Katja Obinger left, Elizabeth Childs left, and now Helena is leaving. Or all away.

* * *

Except it wasn’t Elizabeth Childs at all, Helena learns – learns it hard, learns it like metal in her side. Helena doesn’t know her name, only that Helena is so afraid that it almost makes her hands shake, on fishing wire, on needles. Something about this one is different, something makes her _she_ and not _it_ and Helena is so afraid. Her traitormind keeps heartbeating _but my own_ and _you are me_ and _I am you_ and she was stupid enough to _say_ that, wasn’t she, right there out loud to not-Beth, to whoever this is. You are me. I am you.

Helena is afraid that she is in _love_ , because she is afraid but mostly she is hungry, all the time hungry, hungry to meet this woman. Hunger leads her to stuff her hair under a hat and prowl into the police station; hunger leads her to eat a muffin, stuff it whole in her face, but it is notenoughneverenough she needs _more_.

They meet. Not-Beth is a shadow in the light. She makes the light brighter, by being there. Her shadow shadows doth make bright; Helena loves her, she loves the way Helena’s hands fit so neatly around hers, her hands around a gun.

She throws herself into love the way she throws herself into killing: wholeheartedly. Love. Love. Love. This one cannot die. This one is Helena’s, damn the sin, damn the blasphemy, this one is _Helena’s_.

She’s dizzy with it, running from Maggie’s apartment, running from Maggie, running from the weight of what she is doing and what she has done. Love. Love. Love.

She collapses. Love is rust in her blood, rust from the metal she pulled out of her side; love makes her bleed, drip-drip-drip.

Love makes her _dream_.

She can’t see much – the dream is too bright, so bright Helena’s eyes water, even closed – but she can feel the warmth of the other next to her, _feel_ the way she’s smiling, feel a foreign smile stretching her own cheeks. They are together and it is so bright Helena can’t see through it, dizzying. Next to her, so close Helena can almost _breathe_ her, is the woman who spared Helena and who Helena spared. She is dark, but even in the dark she is bright. Darkly bright. Bright in dark.

Then she _laughs_ , and Helena wakes up feeling like she’s been shot in the chest.

* * *

She wakes to Tomas saying _kill_ , saying _it_ , saying _you_ are _the light_ , and Helena says yes yes of course yes because she’s learned by now that the only way she can go is if she’s killing, if she’s being the Helena she needs to be.

(Underneath that is a giddy lurch in Helena’s stomach, a giddy hungry lurch, that says: _you are hungry all the time when you are not with her and her hand fits perfectly in yours it_ is _your hand and you have a connection and now you’ve dreamed of her, Helena, Helenachild, Helena you are in love_.

Love. Love. Love.

O!)

Helena finds her – feels pulled to her – and lets her hunger wrestle control of her tongue; she knows food won’t solve anything but needs it anyways, needs it in her stomach, she is so hungry she can’t breathe through it.

They go to a restaurant together. Helena has never been to a restaurant with anyone. She has never wanted anyone. She has never wanted anyone like _this_ , the way she wants all the food she eats, plates and plates of it. The woman watches her but it doesn’t feel like MaggieandTomas watching; it feels different, feels better, feels _right_.

“I dreamed that—” she says, urgently, then sucks in a quick breath. Bad enough she’s said _you are me I am you_ , she couldn’t. She couldn’t do this too. “––we were friends.”

“We’re not friends,” says the woman across the table, coldly.

Helena agrees, a little bit – she doesn’t think _friends_ is a good enough word. That isn’t what Helena wants, even if Helena has never had a friend. She wants something _more_. Something _better_. But on the other hand – that dream, that was real, and she _wants_ it.

So: “We will be,” she says, shrugging. “I’ve seen it.”

“Don’t they feed you wherever you go,” her companion says, and Helena thinks: notenoughneverenough.

By this she means, of course, that she is always hungry. There is not enough food for her in all the world, not nearly enough. But she also thinks _When you are gone I am hungry. When you are here I am full to bursting_. She thinks about all the food this woman has given her, and how Helena is so full she wants to curl up, and sleep, and dream of the two of them together. She thinks about the hunger in her body to wrap her arms around this woman and dream, the two of them together.

But that is so many words, and Helena has never been good at words anyways.

The point is this: it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

She fumbles for the words and misses. She changes the subject. Her mouth keeps talking and her body keeps being hungry, too hungry for Helena to concentrate; she blinks, and her body is against the other her body, and it feels like eating after a famine.

The knife does not feel like that; Helena slowly, sadly, takes her foot away. She is so hungry she can barely stand, barely stumble her way out the door.

She is so in love she can barely stand.

She is so in love she can barely breathe through it.

She is so in love. She is empty, empty, empty. She is aching for someone to hold.

* * *

_Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah_ Helena throws herself into love the way she throws herself into killing: with all of her, every single piece of her.

This puts her in a cage.

This gets her _out_ of the cage, and by that she means: Sarah gets her out of the cage, Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah, Sarah’s shadow brighter than shadows, Sarah making Helena hungry as an empty cage and full as a cage with Helena in it, the light falling on Sarah like it’s just as hungry as Helena is and—

Sarah is everything. Sarah is Helena’s entire world. Helena has given up her whole purpose for Sarah, has destroyed herself for Sarah, has turned her back on God for Sarah, blasphemy, oh. She is past the point of thinking William Shakespeare could understand, love so hungry in you that it eats all the parts of you that are not love, love so hungry in you that you will die if you do not – if you do not—

“ _You_ ,” she croaks, so full of emotion she thinks she’ll die from it, glu-tton-ing, full to bursting. Then she pauses, and forces out, “are all I have now.”

She takes one, two staggering steps towards Sarah, _Sarah_ , Sarah whose hands fit perfectly around a gun and could fit around Helena’s hands too, Helena who is a gun, Helena who has been a gun. Sarah who is all the better parts of Helena. Sarah. Sarah. Sarah. Helena wraps her arms around Sarah and it feels like finally being full. It feels like a light in the dark. It feels like being whole again. It feels like God.

“I love you,” she whispers. The words, where they enter Helena’s ears, sound like _amen_.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is in part from two sonnets. The first is [Sonnet LXII](http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/62), which goes like this:
> 
> Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye  
> And all my soul, and all my every part;  
> And for this sin there is no remedy,  
> It is so grounded inward in my heart.  
> Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,  
> No shape so true, no truth of such account;  
> And for myself mine own worth do define,  
> As I all other in all worths surmount.  
> But when my glass shows me myself indeed  
> Beated and chopp'd with tanned antiquity,  
> Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;  
> Self so self-loving were iniquity.
> 
> 'Tis thee, myself, **that for myself I praise** ,  
> Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
> 
> The second part is from [Sonnet XXXIX](http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/39), which you can find in the piece; the line it's taken from is:
> 
> And what is't but mine own **when I praise thee**?
> 
> The sonnets I used in this fic are Sonnets [LXXV](http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/75), [XLIII](http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/43), and [XXXIX](http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/39).
> 
> Sonnets I wanted to use but did not have room for:
> 
> [Sonnet CXLIV, which is about how love can make angels fall.](http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/144)
> 
> [Sonnet III, which is about mirrors, and mothers, and wombs.](http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/3)
> 
> [The aforementioned LXII, which is about self-love.](http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/62)
> 
> This was a ton of fun to write; as always, I welcome all feedback, so please leave kudos + comment if you enjoyed! Thanks!


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